Sunday, 27 February 2011

First Tunisia, then Egypt and now Libya is at the brink as I write. People power.

Gaddaffi sees himself as a revolutionary leader, not a president, and so cannot resign, as the people demanded.

Revolutionary leaders ought to be respected for their vision, for their fortitude and for their ability to bring about revolution and surviving. When we look at the east Asian countries, not excluding Singapore, we see historians having rather nice things to say of leaders who took us out of colonial rule, hailing these as "fathers" of the nation.

Problem is such leaders, after being comfortably in unopposed power (dictatorship?) for years often forget that whilst the nation might owe them a lot, the nation does not owe them EVERYTHING.

The rot sets in when such leaders begin to see and appropriate their nation's wealth as their own. They start enriching themselves, and their families, blurring the line between what belongs to the nation and what belongs to the individual. Worse, they bring in laws to institutionalize such blatant corruption.

The people will acquiesce, usually for as long as they are happy and reasonably well-fed plus a little bit of room to give them a sense or myth of well-being.

About Me

Daughter of butcher and 'housewife' in Singapore. A social anthropologist by training (NUS, then London-SOAS). A reluctant migrant in UK, married to English husband whose "mistress" is the City of London. Now a full-time mother who also runs an online eco-business.